The legal recruiting field used to be led by former lawyers, but that's not the case anymore. Here are 5 things you should know before jumping in without a legal background.

There is a LOT to know about legal recruiting. For a rather niche field, the world of big law (law firms with more than 1000 lawyers) legal recruiting has a fairly high “bar” of its own – if only a theoretical one (the bar is the final state/national exam that law students must pass to practice law). In fact, the field of legal recruiting was originally lead by former lawyers, and those with a JD (juris doctorate, or a legal degree) still dominate the career track today.

But it’s not impossible to get in, especially if you’re a quick study in an immersion environment (read: big law firm). Below are 5 things to know to get you started:

5 Things to Know

1. Not all lawyers are the same. More specifically, there is a difference between partners and associates, counsel, and summer associates. These differences are important to them (they’ve worked hard to get there), and important to acknowledge in your interactions with them (you want to keep your job).

• The Partners are at the top of the food chain - they own the firm, bring in the clients, and distribute both wealth and work to the rest of the firm. Learn their names first.

• Associates work for the partners. The kind of work they receive can be determined by their class year, or seniority, and areas of specialty. You can generally get by with learning their names as you go.

• Counsel is basically a sort-of step between an associate and a partner. While those with a counsel title have the experience of a partner, they don’t have the same responsibilities or underlying business association, for whatever reason (and there are usually very good reasons). Learn their names like you would partners.

• Summer associates are law students that are interning at the firm over their summer breaks. They are given “real” legal work to do to prove their skills, however, they have not graduated law school yet. Although not technically lawyers, we include them here because they are a big part of why the legal recruiting world exists (and why legal recruiters never take vacations in summer). You don’t need to worry about learning their names – they will be ingrained into your head before they even step foot into the firm.

2. Be prepared to sacrifice your summer vacation. There are two very important and very major things happening in the legal recruiting world during the summer: the Summer Associate Program and On-Campus Recruiting (OCI). These two programs are typically impossible to escape responsibly as a legal recruiter and will require your presence (unless you get into Partner Recruiting but that is typically a later step in the legal recruiting world – nonetheless, there is hope for future summers!). Also, know these programs:

• Summer Associate Program: Firms like to grow by bringing in law students, so after their first or second year of law school, the firm will select a small group of students to intern at the firm during their summer break. The workload, events, trainings, and overall coordination of this small group of students is entirely up to the legal recruiting team. For most firms, this typically begins after the second week in May and will run until the last week in July.

• On-Campus Recruiting (OCI): How do firms select the small group of students they would like to invite to intern over the summer? OCI is how. OCI is an intense interviewing sprint with many law firms visiting many law schools to find the best students. It currently begins the last week in July (schools and firms keep pushing it earlier and earlier to get the best jump on the brightest students) and lasts until early September. Summer? Gone. (Not to worry though, I’ve taken fantastic vacations in spring, and since no one else is vacationing then my posts get all the attention!)

3. You may get deep fulfillment from watching “your” summer associates “grow up”. So far this article has made a lot of noise about the summer sacrifice, and it would be remiss for us to leave out the other side of the coin. Because in many case you get to see the progression of these students from first interview, to summer associate, to passing the bar, to first year associate and beyond (depending on how long you stick around) and you tend to become quite attached to them and their success. When they “make it” you’ll want to celebrate as well!

4. Not all lawyers go to trial. In many cases, should you choose to go into big law, MOST of the lawyers time will not be in a courtroom. Not what you’d expect by watching TV, right?

So what is it that all these lawyers do all day? The answer has to do with practice groups.

Practice groups are areas of commerce or government that team of lawyers specializes in. There are a lot of things that the rule of law has to be applied to, and that interpretation is what many lawyers in big law are working on all day in their offices.

They ensure that their clients are complying with government regulations, that other countries are treating US companies fairly, structuring real estate deals, modifying, facilitating and updating employment agreements, ensuring healthcare products and placements are compliant, and protecting the consumers from misleading advertising slogans – to name a few. In other words, lawyers don’t need to go to trial to argue, and most of that interpretation can be done outside the courtroom.

What does that mean for you? It’s good to understand because the partners will count on you to help guide the best candidates to them, and the backgrounds of those candidates will vary widely based on the kind of law they practice. Knowing about their practice group (and that there ARE practice groups) will help you ask the right questions.

Additionally, you’ll likely be involved in structuring their trainings at some point in your career. Different practice groups will want to focus on different skills, according to what they spend most of their time doing. Here again, knowing that each practice group can function completely differently than another will help ensure you ask enough questions to tailor those trainings so their group can benefit the most.

5. It’s all about words. Not only do lawyers work with words all day, but there is a general vocabulary associated with working in a legal environment that is helpful to understand in advance. In your case you’ll want to have familiarity with both legal terms as well as law school terms. There are some good guides on the internet to help (my top find here), and below are some basics to get you started:

• 1L, 2L, 3L: A first year law student, second year law student, and third year law student, respectively. Also helpful to know that law school is typically three years and is considered a graduate school (happens after an undergraduate degree.)

• Attrition: It’s defined as the natural reduction of staff (read: lawyers) due to typical courses of business such as retirement and merges. If you understand this as a different way of saying “turnover” you won’t be far off.

• Lexis/Westlaw: Legal electronic databases that are essential for your law students to do their work. They search cases with these tools.

• SCOTUS: Supreme Court of the United States. One of the better acronyms.

• ABA: American Bar Association. Administers the bar exam (see above) and maintains active professional standing for lawyers.

What did you find helpful to know in your first year as a legal recruiter? Let us know in the comments below!